


Prayer Beads

by altairattorney



Category: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Immortal Severance Ending (Sekiro)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27593606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/pseuds/altairattorney
Summary: A collection of small stories about Sekiro.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1: white hair, Immortal Severance ending.

When Wolf began to lose his white hair, the sky was thick with snow.

The strands in his fingers matched the world outside – mere remains, frozen and defunct. A pale winter insisted on mauling Ashina with its fangs, merciless to its carbonized bones.

All that the flames had spared from oblivion, the snow now hid within its touch and smothered.

Each day that followed, with the flakes that came to die on the porch of the temple, some of his unnatural hair met the ground. Wolf did not need a chipped water bowl to remind him; his reflection would change, to sediment and burn itself even in his uncaring mind.

He watched his white hair fall with gentleness, plagued by the certainty it was never to grow back. Just as the mantle outside, softly covering wood and fields and gravestones – it was to melt away like a memory, to only leave charred black and scars behind.

One icy night, within the unreal silence all around him, Wolf found it in himself to grasp his bowl. He imagined raven strands where some of the thinning silver still resisted.

And for the first time, stranger to the unforgiving cold, a few warm drops were also allowed to fall to the temple floor.


	2. Chapter 2

In the faint light of the incense burner, Kuro watched Wolf sleep.

He knelt close, observing his chest rise and fall as if it was going to break. His snores trembled each time, fraught with exhaustion and nightmares he did not even feel capable of imagining.

And yet, as Kuro was too well aware, no force in the world could have kept him still – no other way to calm the storm, if not the soft prayer of his voice.

Under the cover of a heavenly smell, Wolf slept, Kuro grieved. His heart, if in silence, could not stop pouring tears; and still there weren’t enough to match all of his scars.

They could keep going until the end of time, together trapped in their ethereal prison, and Kuro would never break even – not with each wound, each death, each choice born of devotion.

Still, from the ragged rhythm of Wolf’s sleep, Kuro collected all the resolve he could. He filled in the gaps of that broken rest with slow, steady breaths – his best effort to match a warrior’s strength.

No one had ever showed to rid Wolf of his troubles, nor to fight off the threats to take him away for good. If he did not try, Kuro knew, no one else would. That much was enough to set his choice in stone.

It did not matter how hard the world could tear Wolf apart. He was always going to find Kuro there – waiting, at the end of it all, in the warm light of their room.

Wolf slept, Kuro breathed, until the night wasted away in nothingness. When the last candle died, both rested side by side. No questions were asked, no confirmation needed.

After all, everything they had was each other – asleep in a world abandoned by man, hidden just behind the smell of sakura.


End file.
